Iran-Israel intel war rages as Tehran says it identified Israeli spies worldwide
The announcement came in the wake of a chain of Israel-blamed targeted assassinations of senior Iranian officers in Syria, which have left Tehran in a tight spot for revenge.
Iran's Intelligence Ministry said this week it had identified a "considerable" number of operatives collaborating with Israel across 28 countries, in what it called the largest ever counterintelligence operation against the Israeli government.
In a statement published on its official website Friday, the ministry claimed that the spies had been operating across Africa, Asia and Europe. Details of the spies have been shared with some of the countries with which Iran maintains intelligence cooperation, according to the statement.
It went on to say that the operation also found clues into certain "covert military facilities, arms production centers and strategic non-military industries" inside Israel, without elaborating further.
Iran and Israel have been waging an intense intelligence battle for decades. Israel's foreign spy agency, Mossad, is believed to have increasingly infiltrated Iranian military and nuclear facilities, carrying out nearly a dozen assassinations of senior Iranian nuclear scientists since 2010. Tehran, on the other hand, is facing accusations of plotting similar attacks against Israeli diplomats and citizens worldwide, including one in Cyprus in 2021, which Israeli officials said had been promptly thwarted.
